Iraqi forces have been accused of using the controversial and deadly
war weapon white phosphorus in an attack on ISIS-held areas in western
Mosul.
An explosion was captured on a Kurdish TV station who were livestreaming on Saturday when Iraqi forces made their move.
Stills from the blast showed it appeared to have the signature bright
white plume of smoke which follows a white phosphorus attack, Human
Rights Watch told Al Jazeera.

At least 26 bodies of blindfolded and handcuffed men have been found in government held areas in and around Mosul since the operation to retake the city began in October 2016, Human Rights Watch said today.

In 15 of the cases, local armed
forces told a foreign journalist that the men were extrajudicially
killed by government security forces who had them in custody under
suspicion of Islamic State (also known as ISIS) affiliation. In the
remaining cases, reported by local and international sources, the sites
of the apparent executions – all in government held territory – raise
concerns about government responsibility for the killings. A foreign
journalist also said that a government official told them that a Sunni
Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi) unit,
which is part of the government forces working to retake Mosul, was
responsible for the extrajudicial killing of 25 men in their custody and
dumping the bodies in the Tigris River.

“The bodies of bound and
blindfolded men are being found one after the other in and around Mosul
and in the Tigris River, raising serious concerns about extrajudicial
killings by government forces,” said Lama Fakih,
deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The lack of any
apparent government action to investigate these deaths undermines the
government’s statements on protecting detainee rights.”

Extrajudicial executions during an
armed conflict are war crimes and if widespread or systematic, carried
out as part of policy, would constitute crimes against humanity.

Iraqi forces, including the Popular Mobilization Forces, are screening and detaining
men fleeing Mosul, in some cases in unidentified and informal detention
centers where they are cut off from contact with the outside world. The
authorities have not released any information on the number of people
detained, or being investigated or charged. Given past abuse of people
detained by the PMF and other government military and security forces,
Human Rights Watch has flagged concerns about detainees’ treatment, including possible executions.

On May 13 and 15, 2017, two groups
of aid workers and a foreign journalist said that they saw groups of
corpses, 15 bodies in all, by the side of a road between the village of
Athba and town of Hammam al-Alil, about 15 kilometers south of west
Mosul. The area is entirely under the control of Iraqi government
forces. One group said they had driven past the area a day earlier and
the bodies had not been there, suggesting they were killed on May 12 or
13.

Local armed forces at the nearest
checkpoint told the journalist that they saw Iraqi “security forces”
bring the men to the area and shoot them. The journalist observed many
bullet casings in the area on May 15. The journalist found an identity
card on one of the bodies and confirmed with a contact within the
National Security Service, a security body under the ultimate control of
the prime minister, that the name was on their government database of
about 90,000 people wanted for ISIS-affiliation.

Again, 229 days.

The United Nations News Centre notes:Some 100,000 children remain in extremely dangerous conditions in
western sections of Iraq’s Mosul city as fighting between Government and
terrorist forces continues, the United Nations children’s agency today
reported, warning that “children’s lives are on the line.”
“We are receiving alarming reports of civilians including several children being killed in west Mosul,” said Peter Hawkins, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
Representative in Iraq, in a statement, noting that boys and girls are
being killed, injured and used as human shields as the fighting
intensifies by the hour.
An estimated 100,000 girls and boys remain in extremely dangerous
conditions in the Old City and other areas of west Mosul, he said,
calling on all parties in west Mosul to keep children out of harm’s way
at all times.
“Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure including hospitals,
clinics, schools, homes and water systems should stop immediately,” Mr.
Hawkins said.

Children's lives remain at stake because the government told them not to
leave Mosul when the operation began and waited until late April to
finally say otherwise.

Even then, the Baghdad-based government failed to provide a safe passage out of Iraq, leaving thousands and thousands at risk.

In other news, RUDAW reports: Iraq’s internal incomes in the oil sector alone since the fall of
Saddam Hussein’s regime from 2003 to 2016 had reached nearly $722
billion, of which 57 percent of this portion is exported outside of the
country with another $112 billion missing.
“We have six precise reports in hand on transferring cash outside of the
country, indicating that 57 percent of the cash made in Iraq is sent
outside,” Ahmed Haji Rashid, head of the finance committee in the Iraqi
parliament, told Rudaw.

“What the government is using now is $115 billion and the private sector
retains $58 billion. But $112 billion is still missing,” he noted.

Commenting on committees formed to follow up on the fate of the cash
flow out of the country, he explained, “work has been done but courts in
this country are not assistive."

Nouri al-Maliki, former prime minister of Iraq and forever thug,
enriched himself during his two terms as prime minister and his son also
suddenly had a ton of money which was used to buy sportscars and
various residences in the west.

That should sound like deja vu. Remember, the
reason ISIS was able to rampage across Iraq in the first place was
because it was welcomed by Sunnis weary of being abused by Shiite forces
under the control of former prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Now
oppression has come to Sunni Iraq once again under the PMUs. Another
violent Sunni counter-reaction seems inevitable, and then on we go.

The good news is that the PMUs are caught in the middle of a struggle for the future of Iraqi Shias.
The three key figures to watch here are Maliki, back from ignominy and
brandishing the PMUs that he helped create; Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi, who understands the PMUs are essential to defeating ISIS but
wants to restrain them; and Moqtada al-Sadr, who’s reinvented himself as
a populist with a focus on economic issues and wants to disband the
PMUs entirely. Iraq is majority-Shia, but its general interpretation of
Shiite Islam tends to be less extreme than Iran’s, meaning it’s possible
that moderation may still prevail, either from Abadi’s good sense or
Sadr’s outsider pressure. The PMUs themselves are also diverse—not all
are committed to sectarian suppression.